What the EFF is ETHDenver?

4 minute read

Last month I had the great (GREAT) pleasure of attending the world’s largest
Blockchain Hackathon ever, in Denver Colorado: ETHDenver.

This was the second ever official Ethereum hackathon, following the ETHWaterloo
hackathon that took place in Toronto Ontario late last year. During the event
in Denver they also announced the formation of ETH Global, which will be
organizing and rolling out similar events around the world.

What’s the goal?

ETHDenver encouraged Ethereum developers and blockchain minds from across them
globe to come together, and take part in a 36-hour hackathon to birth new
projects and ideas, and try to build toward supporting the Ethereum ecosystem
into a scalable future.

Aside from the hacking, there were also workshops and speakers from the largest
projects in the blockchain space, and booths setup where you could meet team
members from Shapeshift, Aragon, 0x, Storj, PolyMath, Dharma, MakerDAO, and so
many more. Aside from awesome clothing and sticker swag, the booths were an
incredible opportunity to shoot the breeze with top minds working on top
decentralized projects.

After opening ceremonies Friday, the bell rang - and off went the hackers, on
an energy-drink filled bonanza racing to Sunday morning.

Who was there? Why was I there?

The application page for ETHDenver stressed many times in bold letters that
this was not in fact just for developers, and that all were welcome to take
part either in the conference aspects or in joining a hacker team for the
weekend and offering their diverse expertise.

I was very lucky in attending with the BlockCrushr Labs founders Scott Burke
and Andrew Redden, and joining their hack team - alongside Elliott Bernstein,
an ace developer from San Francisco.

Over the course of the weekend a new hack was born from the BlockCrushr
team, a powerful crypto wallet with recurring payment capabilities -
GroundHog. (Bonus points if you figure the recurring payments angle to where
the project got its name.)

Different from being a ‘just for fun’ hack, GroundHog was based on addressing
real needs in our projects and in the blockchain commerce ecosystem. The hack
is no joke, and has rocketed into being a going concern - taking lots of
attention, and garnering interest from investors and future users alike!

What was is all about?

The best way to comment on the overall aim of the event, is to describe what it
WASN’T about. Not once did anyone reference the price of any crypto asset, the
movement in the markets, or the wealth being lost of created. This was about
building and innovating, not about holding and speculatively watching.

While not a direct message or named exclusion, I noted that not once in the many
presentations, pitches or conversations I took in did I hear a single mention of
the world of Mining. Could simply have been a circumstance of the circles I was
in at various times, or it could also be a symptom of Ethereum moving toward
a Proof of Stake (PoS) method of network verification and reward, rather than
the Proof of Work (PoW) world that mining today supports.

Either way, you get an idea that despite the many backgrounds and expertise that
were present, the weekend very much had a forward looking, deep dive tech kind
of feel - where people escaped their specific work focus and looked to the
broader ecosystem’s future.

The ETH community is not one to be taken lightly, and although there was never
an ill word spoken of any other crypto company / project / or community - the
devotion of all these brilliant minds supporting Ethereum solutions, certainly
speaks ironclad of the future of the movement.

Closing highlights?

No, Vitalik “the unicorn” was not there - but his dad sure was, looking all
jacked in his pink ETH Denver shirt. His L4V and MakerDAO announced over the
weekend partnering on the new Stable Fund to support projects incorporating
Maker’s DAI stable coin.

It was so invigorating and refreshing to hear founders of the top flight
projects in all of blockchain technology take the stage and discuss the
crumbling of our current financial system. The unsustainable foundations it is
built upon, and how it is due for a replacement by the emerging tools of the
blockchain world. These are the kind of thoughts and visioning that happen in
my mind on a daily basis, but they certainly can start to feel radical and
unattainable if you work inside a bubble.

Inclusion … not once, even when speaking to core development teams of genius
dApps, did I feel lorded over or spoken down to for not being a full stack
blockchain developer. The spirit of solution finding and diversification
trumped all.

Denver is beautiful! Not that I’ve heard anyone say otherwise in my life,
but I had also never heard anyone rave about it as being a destination to
see. The people, the sites, the weather, everything about Denver was
welcoming, accessible, and enjoyable. Love to go back soon.

Ethereum is no currency, fool. It’s a movement, and a world computing
foundation from which to build and support many, many distributed ledger
type decentralized applications and projects.

Be empowered to do your thing. There I met so many people rocking ideas for
DAO’s, coop community frameworks, stable coin collateralization models, social
impact and supply chain empowering hacks - that finding a space to work on your
own jam is something you just MUST make time for. The community wants and needs
it, and be honest - there’s nothing cooler than digging deep into that little
jam, you wanna jam on, like only you can jam on.

Thanks for reading, I really hope to take in more of these events as they
rollout - and would without hesitation encourage anyone who has the opportunity
to do the same to do so

Share on

You May Also Enjoy

We’ve written before about the different types of cryptocurrency miners that exist. Our Mining 101 highlights how GPU and CPU miners differ from ASIC miners. Today we want to touch on some new trends and market developments pertaining to mining technology and how some are leveraging it to manipulate the blockchain markets.

Let’s face it. Swapping cryptocurrencies is a pain. Especially for a crypto noob. In fact, one of the most common questions we get from those new to cryptocurrencies is ‘how can I easily convert coin X to coin Y?’ If you’re dealing in common cryptos like Bitcoin or Litecoin, this can be achieved easily via an exchange that trades in both. But as traders begin to explore the world of altcoins, this can become more of a challenge. Until you discover ShapeShift.io

For those who have been following the Crypto Noob Mining Club’s journey to production, we’re finally here! The miners are up and running and we’ve just completed our testing phase. Here’s what we’ve learned

Energy consumption is one of the biggest critiques of cryptocurrency and blockchain asset mining worldwide. According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, Bitcoin mining alone consumes more energy than Denmark, Belarus and Bulgaria do as individual countries. Some blockchain networks, like Ethereum, are moving away from mining as the mechanism for verifying asset transactions, but the Crypto Noobs are taking a different approach …